Advanced Social Media Marketing? Back to Basics First!

by Massimo Burgio

I keep reading about companies and brands “investing” in very expensive internet marketing and social media “executive reports“, where the only things they get is aggregated data that doesn’t reflect at all their business, their market and, most of all, the level of resources, professionalities and skills these companies will have to actually deploy in such fields.

At a recent meeting a potential client asked me: “Do you know that on Instagram there are 58 pictures uploads per second, 5 million pictures per month“? I looked at him and, with my best “consultant’s smile” I said “Sure!” – but at the same time I was thinking “And what do you care, when your website is not even optimized for search engines, your social media presence is risible, and the Instagram users are not your target audience?“.

Q: “Did you know that on Instagram there are 58 pictures uploads per second, 5 million pictures per month“?

A: “What do you care, when your website is not even optimized for search engines and your social media presence is risible“?

This section of the site used to be very active as a blog, but we stopped blogging at the beginning of 2013. This article is from December 2012, but we think that its insight can still provide value, so we included it in our new site, in this “ex-blog” section that we now see mostly as a “online marketing resources” page, a sort of oldies but goldies.

We hope you liked the article, feel free to share it. Sorry if some references are dated; we “remastered” our blog posts to fit the new GSI site design, and we included a few updates while republishing the content, while deciding to leave the articles mainly untouched, as they also represent some sort of “family photo album” for us.

Thank you for reading our blog, and for following GSI.Massimo Burgio

Other classic things I hear at meetings are the need for a “viral campaign“, the desire to “develop an iPad application” or even to implement an “e-enterprise model” – and this is when, respectively, their company websites are not even SEO-friendly, their target audience is not tablet-ready, or their internal resources still cannot get the difference between a browser and a widget (yes, this still happens in 2013). It’s about time to stop this hype, and to go back to basics!

I don’t need to write a long article about it, as I’ve always been advocating the need for a rational approach to internet marketing, and a strategic approach to search and social media marketing.

Let me just drop a memo: before engaging in internet marketing activities, specially if expecting quality results and some form of return on the investment of money, time, resources and reputation, companies need to refocus on the following basics:

a website optimized for search engines, performance and conversion, social media ready, and of course responsive, for best visualization and interaction across all platforms, including mobile and tablet;

a solid social presence across several social media networks and platforms;

Does your organization have all the above basics in place? If not, don’t waste your time, money and resources trying to achieve a level of internet marketing you are not ready for. Just take a step by step approach, and you’ll eventually get there. But, first of all, remember to go back to basics! The key to a successful re-engineering of the entire internet marketing and social media marketing set-up are two major interventions, and both gets filed under “training”:

strategic training for top management and A and B level executives, that will allow to re-focus, re-plan, re-structure and re-organize the internal resources and the whole company focus;

operational training for all employees, specially for those whose whose activities have an internet marketing impact, so they can learn the basics, and also the advanced topics of social media marketing.

To learn more about the importance of internet marketing and social media marketing training, check out my relatively new blog article about training – while the article has been published more than one year ago, the content and the Slideshare presentations included are still very valid to today’s internet marketing training needs. Or you can just get in touch with us, and we’ll figure out together what are your organization’s training needs.

]]>http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/social-media-marketing-back-to-basics/feed/0Social Fundraising: How to Fund a Cause with Social Mediahttp://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/social-fundraising-how-to-fund-a-cause-with-social-media/
http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/social-fundraising-how-to-fund-a-cause-with-social-media/#commentsWed, 20 Jun 2012 12:39:06 +0000http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/?p=1022A set of Slideshare presentations (in Italian, article in English) about one of my Master class on the topic of social fundraising and gift economy, with a couple of case histories of successful crowdfunding.

At my next speaking/reaching commitments I will be talking about some of the topics I already explored a lot over the last year or two: social media strategies, social media optimization, video optimization, and social media policies – of course updated to the latest news and insights. But I want to take advantage of this post to share the presentations I created on a new topic: social fundraising – a topic I’m particularly proud of since the two case histories are related to one of the most inspiring communities I ever been part of: Burning Man.

I put together the presentations embedded here for a lecture at the “Law and Economy Master on Arts and Culture” (Master in Diritto ed Economia per la Cultura e l’Arte, in Italian – DECA in short), held by a join venture of Sardinian Universities and their University Consortium in Nuoro, the institution running the DECA Master. I’ve been invited to teach a couple of classes on the topic of social fundraising for arts and culture, and I kicked it all off with a introduction of the famous Burning Man art festival in the desert of Nevada (USA), and with the principles that inspire the festival, its values and its community – with a focus on gift economy.

The first set of slides, after an introduction of the Burning Man principles and philosophy, start analyzing the concept of gift economy from historical, sociological and of course economical points of view. The presentation also introduces several sources for the gift economy, from the potlach of Native American tribes to the theories of social change of Marcel Mauss (from his famous book The Gift, 1923), all the way to the more recent applications of gift economy that can be spotted everywhere from volunteers marketplaces, time banks, open source and peer-to-peer technologies, or in hybrid forms in business models based on the freemium concept – or in the Creative Commons and Open Content standards on the copyright and digital rights side.

The second presentation is a classic presentation on social media marketing, strategies and planning – a few concepts I already shared a few times in several languages across the world. The third part of the lecture is where I actually touch base on a few concepts related to raising funds for cultural or charity initiatives by leveraging the power of social media, as well as a few online fundraising tools and applications available online for the now called “crowdfunding campaigns“. One note: there’s no such thing as “leveraging the power of social media“. For the success of a crowdfunding campaign , as well as for anything else crowd-ish, what it’s really needed is… doh, a crowd. A community, or a potential pool of supporters for the cause, a critical mass of followers turned supporters (or backers, as KickStarter defines donors) who will operate as a real grassroot booster for the campaign. Of course the turbo support of social media networks and tools helps a lot, but social media end up being more the infrastructure for the fund raising than the solution.

Power, as always, is on people’s side – but marketers (or fundraisers. in this case) can now get very creative with the fundraising infrastructure, provided that they are able to plan an effective engagement with their target audience. As usual, as for everything social media marketing, the key points are: goal setting, scrupulous planning, creative rollout, effective engagement, and full integration with offline messaging and initiatives.

…

The fourth set of slides is the one that gets me very emotional, as it shows a couple of examples of social fundraising campaigns that are very important to me – the first one from last summer when I joined the incredible IAM Temple Crew to build the Temple of Transition at Burning Man 2011. The case history shows step by step how a team of inspired and committed people distributed across the planet managed to raise around 140,000$ to build one of the most breathtaking art installation in the 25 years of history of Burning Man, just to gift it as a sacred space to the community, and to burn it in a transformational and strongly emotional rite of passage at the end of the event.

The last case history also included in the forth set of slides shows how some of the concepts and values inspired by the same Burning Man community (gift economy) are at the foundation of one initiative I launched with the support of my friends and business partners at Xister. We are currently developing an iPad application packed with kids games for toddlers that will be sold to raise funds for 8 European NGOs with active projects in the field of children’s education in Africa. The iPad4Africa project is a gift economy project and not a no-profit initiative – the difference lies in the fact that besides of giving to the charities network ALL the proceeds from the sale of the iPad app, we won’t get money back to refund our investment in the app development. That investment is our donation, our gift to Africa, with the hope that it will help raise enough money to support the education of thousands of children. More info in the presentation and of course on www.iPad4Africa.org.

Last but not least, it’s a duty and a pleasure to credit my fellow burners and amazing photographers Trey Ratcliff, Neil Girling and Scott London for the breathtaking images of the Temple reproduced here and on the Slideshare presentations. Big credits and kudos also go to all the smart, creative and brave desert brothers and sisters of IAM, the International Arts Megacrew I am proud to have joined to build the Temple of Transition at Burning Man 2011, and to the Xister team for committing with me on a important cause for Africa. No go ahead and start practicing gift economy today!

I love to work with my colleagues and friends at xister, the Italian cutting edge interactive agency I have been involved with since its launch almost 10 years ago, when we all spinned-off Deepend Italy, sinking with all its (awesome) international network through he black hole of the internet bubble of 2001. Some of my Deependers friends founded a new agency with the same design/strategic-driven approach but completely (much better) philosophy. Since then we have crossed paths several times and worked together on several projects, putting also a strong focus on training to the constantly growing xister team (and “sister” company’s Art Attack Adv). GSI is currently working with xister on a couple of projects for major Italian food brands, with GSI supporting xister and its clients on social media marketing, both strategy and operations.

Since we have active projects to work on, I find myself very often spending some time at the xister offices in the center of Rome (Trastevere), where there is also a community lifestyle that in my experience I can only compare to the Googlers at the Googleplex, but with an Italian spin. I love the open space on several levels and the awesome terrace where many meetings happens. Actually, since xister is an active workplace, there are constantly a number of meetings happening everywhere. I love to sneak in at many of them to get a preview of the constantly cutting edge marketing, design and technological creative solutions my friends come up with every day. In some cases (specially with old schoolers) I get pitched in on the fly for ideas or input, and I love to offer all my (free of charge) support, even if marginal in most of the cases – but I like when the input is on the training/skills side, as I know the shared knowledge will be further shared and treasured by the xister team on a number of interactive marketing projects.

A few weeks ago, while sharing the xister terrace with one of the automotive teams, I got asked some input on effective performance in online videos management, specially those published on YouTube. I grabbed a sheet of recycled paper and a pen and, since I love decalogues, I started drafting one on the spot – the one you see in the picture below, that I snapped with my camera phone to share it also through this blog. After reading it, I realized that even if the points are all there, the order of some points should be changed and some of the quickly drafted points needed more details – let’s see how I reshuffled the original YouTube videos management decalogue into the final one.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS MANAGEMENT: A DECALOGUE

Content first: always aim at quality (including HD resolution), and stick to the 5Es. Video content to be successful should aways be: Engaging, Entertaining, Educational, Enlightening, Ethic. Try to achieve at least two or three of this Es at the time for max viral potential.

Try to publish “video series” as opposite to single / standalone videos. Whenever possible, publish a trailer / sneak peak / coming soon video a week/few days before distributing the main video.

Always optimize the video files for search engines relevancy before uploading them: use strategic keywords for tags, metatags, title, description, etc. You can use free tools such as Metadata Hootenanny to perform your video metadata optimization.

Always fill in all the YouTube info fields when uploading a video file: use strategic keywords for title, description with URL, tags, categories, geolocalization info, etc.

If the video contains audio content, always publish an audio transcript in the description field. Use subtitles, annotations, choose a good thumbnail and leave the sharing and distribution option as open as possible.

Adopt also other online video sharing portals and services (such as DailyMotion, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Vimeo, etc) and manage the uploads centrally by using multiple upload tools such as TubeMogul.

Always monitor comments and reply to them promptly. Use comments to offer more video-related info and to drive traffic to landing pages by sharing links.

Explore and scout for similar / in-target videos and engage in the conversations by commenting and publishing a link to the video you want to promote.

Always share videos on social networks, targeting and engaging with the video content the appropriate target audience. Consider embedding to maximize video views, uploading and sharing from social network to maximize video distribution.

Among similar / in-target videos, spot those with the largest number of views (or strictly in target) and publish the video as video reply (link becomes available when clicking inside the comment box).

For more details on how to optimize videos for search engine also refer to this previous blog article on video SEO, where you will find plenty of video optimization tips and video SEO decalogues such as the one pictured below. Good luck with your online video management!

A couple of weeks ago I replied to an email request of a friend who asked me, for a presentation to its client, if I was able to help him out with a brief check-list for social media operations. Not so difficult, since I always tend to create such lists for my clients, as a list – a decalogue in this case – is generally easier to remember, mostly when built in a progressive sequence of logical points.

Of course designing, planning and managing a social media marketing campaign is not as easy, as each of the points in my decalogue include plenty of sub-activities and campaign modules, so don’t think things are going to be easy as counting to 10. First of all, like Spinal Tap, my Social Media Marketing Decalogue has 11 points instead of 10. This is why I think there must be some sort of “ground zero” or “zero step” from where taking the first step, before actually do that step – and the zero step of course is the definition of social media marketing goals! But let’s see all the step of the process!

0) Define business goals for the online and social channels
As we have seen in many of my social media marketing presentations, the definition of business goals, and not just of channel goals, is the very first step of the process. The image here below shows some of the most common business goals companies should be pursuing online and on social channels.

1 – Define competitors, benchmarks, social media strategy, target audience and, most of all, e-fluencers
Before “jumping on Facebook” or any other social media portal it is suggested to study good benchmarks from your industry and run an accurate online competitor analysis. Also be sure to engage where your target audience is. Define your target audience and investigate on its online social behavior – most important, try to figure out who your e-fluencers are, you are going to need their help a lot. This is also where your social media strategy starts to takes shape.

2 – Choose and customize all strategic social media channels
Once your preliminary analysis is complete, it’s time to take possession of your social media spaces. The Conversation Prism designed by Brian Solis and Jess3 (image below) shows you how the online conversation is often fragmented, with clusters of your target audience everywhere, not just on Facebook. Optimization and customization here are key – you’ll need to create customized profiles whenever it’s possible, full descriptions with links and all, pictures, videos, customized maps, interactive tabs, custom apps, vanity URLs and all that it’s needed for a performing and relevant social media presence.

3 – Allocate resources (people, time, and knowledge to be shared) and make sure that all strategic communication processes converge on social channels
A company, specially a big brand, cannot face the volume of time-material work needed in social media marketing to monitor, engage, produce content and run all day by day operations. A dedicated team is needed and, in some cases, also the support of a dedicated, professional social media marketing agency. Also, this is not just the job of a Marketing department guy – or IT, or else. Non only the entire company should be involved in the new social media presence, but it is also important to make sure that all communications intended towards outside the company find also their respective, optimized social media output. It’s a long work that might require a redefinition of the communication processes, some guidelines and procedures, and of course good training.

4 – Define a social media policy for your employees, and run intensive training sessions for your social media marketing team
Training is key for your social media team, but also for A-level executives who should participate to the process (starting with the business goals definition), as well as any other employee. Generally a social media policy can help set the things straight, but the social media policy alone is no use if it introduction is not supported by intensive social media marketing training sessions to the management, the marketing team, the internet and social media marketing teams, the PR, communication and IT teams and, whenever possible, extended to all employees. As a matter of fact, good social media policies should be shared also with clients, business partners and suppliers, the entire “business ecosystem” of your company’s communication.

5 – Define and share editorial and engagement plans
Once your social media marketing profiles are set up and ready to go, what’s the next step? Listening to the online buzz every day, sure. And engaging, but how? Make sure you create a valuable form of engagement for your target audience. If you keep talking only about yourself nobody wants to listen. It is important to define, create, optimize and share on social networks content that can be appealing to your target audience, and possibly also that produces feedback/interaction. One other important thing to take in consideration is the convergence of all communication needs (from institutional/corporate to commercial, promotional and social communication) and their roll out calendar. It is important to create an editorial plan for the content you want to share, in order to make it easier to plan its production and distribution. You’ll also need an engagement plan, that should take in consideration a lot of interaction on “other profiles” (users, pages, groups) instead of staying bunkered on your owns. This is in general beneficial to a very effective engagement with your target audience.

6 – Define specific KPIs for each channels, and for different goals within each channel
Both your editorial and engagement plans should state specific goals and KPIs and social KPIs, possibly defined by channel, and of course proportional to the effort that your social media marketing plan is dedicating to each channel.

7 – Roll out of all engagement initiatives towards the target audience – pages, groups, tags, hashtags, apps, social ads, etc.
Wow, we are finally ready to go and launch! We had to wait until point 7 of the decalogue, but the preliminary work and the organizational and procedural work of goal setting, analysis, optimization and planning will certainly show its results! Now define a plan of actions that is tied with your editorial plan, engagement plan and overall goals, and you are on your way to success!

8 – Integrate across your social media channels the core messaging of all other communication channels, and social media content across all your communication channels
Easy to say, not so easy when it comes to actually implement this point. Yes your teams all across your company had their social media training, and your company might have also rolled out a social media policy and a set of procedures, but – will your company reach well to these changes? Sometimes it is difficult to change consolidated internal procedures (or just “habits“), but if you want your company messaging to be consistent, effective and pervasive, you need to make sure Integrate across your social media channels the core messaging of all other communication channels, and social media content across all your communication channels.

9 – Measure your results and re-evaluate your KPIs and Social KPIs. Integrate with Social CRM systems and methodologies.
All the above is useless, specially the definition of goals and KPIs if there is not a strong focus on the analytics of your social media marketing efforts. Many companies are still stuck to the “basic” old-school metrics of “visitors” and “page views“, which are useless in the social media arena. It’s more effective a very receptive, active and influential group of 1,000 power users than 1,000,000 fans who just press “like” or drop the occasional comment. It’s more “social” a video (or other content) that has been shared 1,000 times than the same content being “liked” 2,000 times. Don’t take these figures for granted, they are just ballparks out of my experience on clients’ projects, but at the end it all depends on your KPIs and social KPIs. Assess the effectiveness of your plans, initiatives and resources towards such KPIs and take action – change plans or even KPIs or goals, if needed! If your company has a CRM system already in place, it could be a great idea starting integrating all the social media marketing data in your CRM, making it evolving into a more dynamic and accurate Social CRM. Your CRM is a pachyderm with a closed environment that doesn’t allow to integrate new modules? No problem, today Social CRM platforms are practically an off-the-shelf solution, with plenty of solid options to choose from.

10 – Keep testing new social media marketing channels and strategies
The social media landscape is constantly evolving, to a point that it is difficult to forecast what the scenario will be in one year or even more. After the first wave of blogs and wikis (1999-2003) it came then Linkedin (2004) and YouTube (2005) before Facebook exploded (2006), followed by Twitter (2007-2008), while now we are in the full bloom of the geotargeted social networks, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and, again, Facebook Places, all in full mobile/smartphone integration, while our society is moving fast into the tablet and almost “wearable” computers and digital devices. [Note: the dates refer to when the portals / services started being popular, and not to their actual launch]. New communities keep popping up successfully, think Instagram, the community based on the geolocalized exchange of pictures taken with the cool camera iPhone app filters and features. Or the recently launched Google+ network, that we’ll discuss soon at this blog. A company or brand on its way to a comprehensive and effective social media engagement should constantly be following at least the major trends and, if tested with a reasonable rate of success, keep investing on those new channels and technologies – of course don’t forgetting the consolidated ones!

I hope this decalogue / recap will be of some help if you are figuring out which are the basic steps for engaging in social media marketing. Just be aware: the steps won’t be so basic!

Do you have comments and integrations to the decalogue? Also, do you want to share your experience in setting up a social media marketing plan / campaign? What was your methodology? Please drop a comment!

The content of my presentations at the different events changes according the time I have for my presentation, but the core of the research, methodology and messaging about the creation and release of a corporate social media policy for employees is pretty much the same as the one you can find in the presentation here below from International Search Summit London 2010, hosted at my Slideshare account. This is also the most complete presentation I did on the social media policy topic to date, spinning the topic off a Facebook Marketing session.

Since I had a full half hour for my presentation at ISS London, I could have talked in details about social media policies, including the following scenarios:

understanding the risks of brand exposure and reputation on social media networks

all the reasons why you can get banned on Facebook and get your account revoked

what if your company gets a social media corporate account banned or revoked?

why companies need a social media policy

where the social media policy should apply and to whom

classic corporate social media policies

benchmark on the best corporate social media policies

how to build a social media policy

inspirations for social media policies: bloggers’ code of conduct and blogosphere ethics

social media networks rules of engagement

social media don’ts and best practices for Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! Answers, YouTube, Digg and FriendFeed

final case history from the Italian firm Telepass, one of the latest clients at Global Search Interactive: Telepass’ social media policy + company guidelines for employees’ engagement in online conversations.

Have you company already issued a social media policy? What is your experience on the topic?Please share your comments.

]]>http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/social-media-policy-how-to-protect-brand-employees-on-social-media-networks/feed/0Is it Weird, Different or Inspiring? A few Lessons from TED Talkshttp://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/is-it-weird-different-or-inspiring-a-few-lessons-from-ted-talks/
http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/is-it-weird-different-or-inspiring-a-few-lessons-from-ted-talks/#commentsSun, 25 Jul 2010 08:49:44 +0000http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/?p=519I love TED Talks, the series of inspirational keynotes that bring together the smartest people from Technology, Entertainment and Design. In this post, some of the most influential, inspiring and ingenious people of our society - people with vision, courage and a little more than something to say - they can help change the world, or at least your way of thinking.

I love TED Talks, the series of inspirational keynotes that bring together the smartest people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design (hence, TED). Started in 1984, the project now got to a much larger scope, inviting to deliver a keynote the most influential, inspiring and ingenious people of our society, people with a vision, with courage and with a little more than something to say – they say things that can change the world, or at least your way of thinking.

TED is much more than TED Talks. There are two TED Conferences in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, a TED Global conference in Oxford (UK) each summer, the TED Talks video site, a TEDx program for TED events worldwide (one of the most famous is TED Talks India) and an annual TED Prize award. TED spreads out also into the Open Translation and Open TV Projects, equally cutting edge initiatives.

Among the TED Talks that really fascinated me over the last times I can suggest to take your time to listen to s few keynotes. I tried to make a shortlist of my favorite TED Talks, but it is impossible, they are so many! Anyway, I can certainly list of the keynotes that made me change (or refine) my way of thinking, enlightening, entertaining and definitely inspiring me both at personal and professional level, sometimes even beyond that:

I’ll better cut this list down, I can easily list a few more dozens of inspiring TED Talks keynotes! =)

Since many of these keynotes are long (some go even up to 20+ minutes) and I know my readers don’t have the time to explore them all, I invite everybody to find the perfect inspiration by browsing the 700+ TED Talks published online on the TED Talks website. You can browse all TED Talks by category (technology, entertainment, design, global issues and so on) or by the emotional mood you want to get with the TED Talks ideas: persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring… what kind of idea are you looking for? Don’t have the time to browse all the ideas? Let them come to you by subscribing to the iTunes video podcast!

And, since you don’t have time, I publish here one of the shortest, albeit smartest and more inspiring TED Talks I ever watched, Derek Sivers, the creator and CEO of CDBaby.com, one of the major CD and DVD online stores, who deliver a keynote for TED Talks India and tells us a quick tale about diversity. A quick tale that can easily change the way you think at many of the “weird” things you come across every day in business as in everyday life.

]]>http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/is-it-weird-different-or-inspiring-a-few-lessons-from-ted-talks/feed/1Video SEO Optimization (and a Speaker Award) at International Search Summit Berlinhttp://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/video-seo-optimization-international-search-summit-berlin/
http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/video-seo-optimization-international-search-summit-berlin/#commentsSat, 19 Jun 2010 08:01:28 +0000http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/?p=533Earlier this month I had the pleasure to be invited to speak about video SEO optimization at the International Search Summit (ISS) in Berlin. In this post the full presentation and more tips and educational videos on video optimization.

]]>Earlier this month I had the pleasure and the honor to be invited at the International Search Summit (ISS) in Berlin. I already spoke at ISS in the past (ISS London 2009), as the series of conferences hits some of the major cities in Northern Europe, including Oslo in the Scandinavian region.

ISS is a series of conferences organized by WebCertain focused on a specific vertical in search: multi-country, multi-language search marketing. This is also the reason why the ISS Berlin show is included in the much larger Localization World Conference, another international show with a global coverage, focusing on everything local global business.

For ISS Berlin I got back to a search topic after speaking a lot about social media strategies in the latest month: video SEO optimization. Well, the topic is borderline, as the online video optimization lays is somewhere between SEO and the “new” social media optimization techniques, so I could have bridged search engine optimization and social media marketing.

Just to get straight to the point, here is my presentation on video SEO optimization for ISS Berlin, posted on Slideshare as usual and embedded here below.

Just to give a brief summary of the presentation, I started with the now classic SEO Detox Clinic, my idea of 12-step program for hard core SEOs who want to step into SMO (social media optimization). I thought it was very appropriated since the focus of the presentation, and it is always a slide well received by the SEOs in the audience.

The presentation continued with a definition of video SEO, actually the only solid one around, provided by the video search engine Blinkx: “Simply put, video SEO is the art and science of ensuring that your video content attracts as much traffic as possible“. As simple as that. But not so simple…

I contextualized the topic of video SEO talking about the how video are important in the new social web, touching base on social media enablers, that include Google’s blended search results as well as RSS, mash-ups and social networks. I took the opportunity to introduce the Conversation Prism designed by Brian Solis and Jess3 Thomas, the one in the great infographic below, which I love to call “social media mandala“.

After talking a bit about videos on SERPs (including the now classic eye-tracking study by Enquiro) and the new video search features at Google, I introduced a research by German search engine marketing agency SEOlytics that showed the change in video penetration in German search engine results (Google only, as it’s the predominant search engine in Germany) from January 2009 to January 2010. The presence of videos on SERPs grew over the last year from 4.53% to 17.58%, and the presence of organic search results among the “blended” Google results “shrinked” from 82.74% to 39.62%. Very interesting (see presentation above for detailed charts).

“After all, video is better than porn“ is an always popular line when I speak it out at conferences, specially when it is associated with the image in the slide below, where Google Insight for Search shows that the volume of searches for “youtube“, “video” or “videos” is bigger then the volume of searches for terms like “sex” or “porn“. This is an analysis that stands also for a comparison of those terms, that once were “kings of the web“, with other search terms such as “facebook” or “social networks“.

The presentation then moved on to analyze the opportunities and the strategies for video optimization, with tips for optimizing both “hosted” and “posted” videos, meaning both videos published on a company website, or published on third parties sites, such as video sharing sites as YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Yahoo! Video, MySpace Video and more.

I shared a list of 10 video SEO tips for hosted videos – nothing new, for those already engaging in SEO:

1 - Make sure video tags are relevant to the video content2 - Be generous with tags, and adopt keywords variations3 - Match video title and description with top tags / keywords4 - Have one common tag for all your videos (related videos)5 - Don’t use natural language and conjunctions in video title6 - Choose clear, appealing, creative and HD thumbnails7 – Use one video channel per language, and optimize it8 - Try to make it to the “Most view” or “Most discussed” tabs9 - Generate more views by changing Title and Headline10 - Try the new features: inclusions and annotations

The ISS Berlin presentation concluded with more advice about the use of some of my favorite video upload tools, such as Tubemogul or TrafficGeyser, who allow maximum distribution with little effort, and with a quick view both at video long tail, video analytics, and how to create video RSS, MRSS and video XML sitemaps.

My final advice at ISS Berlin was to always hear a word on the topic from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz, and I introduced one of the “SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday” educational search videos featuring Randy giving always good SEO advice. I embed here below the suggested video SEO optimization podcast, but I strongly suggest to browse the entire series of the SEOmoz videos on Vimeo, you’ll find plenty of SEO good tips!

Beside of my presentation, other speakers delivered very interesting presentations, such as those by Andy Atkins-Krüger on Top 10 Tips for International SEO, Isabella Ballanti on SEO Localisation, Dixon Jones on Identifying and exploiting local links, Sébastien Monnier on Achieving European Search Success and Thomas Bindl on PPC Techniques for long tail optimization. Unfortunately I missed most of the presentations as I have been working a lot that day on urgent projects, but of course I managed to have a look at the presentation and to keep the conversation going with some of the speakers also during the networking moments!

ISS Berlin has been a great experience for me, also thanks to the great organization support provided by Gemma Birch of ISS, and also because – you won’t believe it since I travel so much – this has been my first time ever in Berlin, and I really enjoyed it!

Also, did I mention that I have been awarded a ISS Medallion Speaker Award for getting (ex-equo with my friend Dixon Jones) the most votes from the audience as best speaker? This put me in the International Search Summit Hall of Fame, in good company with other great speakers such as Dixon Jones and online PR legendGreg Jarboe? =)

]]>http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/video-seo-optimization-international-search-summit-berlin/feed/013+3+1 Lessons about Social Media Marketing in B2B from Top Expertshttp://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/17-lessons-social-media-marketing-b2b-from-top-experts/
http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/17-lessons-social-media-marketing-b2b-from-top-experts/#commentsTue, 30 Mar 2010 14:37:58 +0000http://www.globalsearchinteractive.net/?p=413Mashable, the cutting edge online magazine and knowledge sharing community, asked 13 top experts about lessons learned in social media marketing for B2B. Add 3 smart comments from the community, and we have a 13+3 list!

The 13 answers, all enlightening, make a perfect list that all B2B marketers should review before deciding to engage on social media marketing (and they are a good list also for the B2C marketers, too!). I shortened some of the longest ones from the original version published on Mashable, and added a final recap of the learnings at the end of the article.

But it’s not all – the lesson learned are 13+3+1 because I republish here also three very interesting contributions to the online conversation by members of the Mashable community, and I added my own lesson learned too! Let’s review all these insights and experiences in social media marketing for B2B.

B2B is more P2P – people to people. Make your business more human. (Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer)

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Content is the best B2B social media lesson. (Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs) ………………….

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In the B2B world especially, it’s crucial to step back and look at your business and who your target customer is. Choosing the right social media networks is crucial. (Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends).

B2B professionals often only look within their niche and sometimes fail to borrow from the consumer world. B2B is a niche for sure, but at the end of the day, people are people. (David Armano, Logic+Emotion).

In B2B people buy expertise. In a world like B2B marketing where reputation and credibility go a long way to helping seal deals, social media is nearly becoming a necessity. (Rohit Bhargava, Influential Online Marketing).

B2B companies can also leverage the improvements in company-client interactions brought about by social media, including those related to user experience, real-time client service discussions, and the integration of social media with existing business practices to create new product or service offerings. (Jessica Faye Carter, Technicultr)

Have a goal. Put the right people in place. Move beyond broadcasting. Create and distribute a set of Social Media Guidelines to employees. (Todd Defren, PR Squared)

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Social media begins with not only listening, but research and analysis. Go to where people are interacting now. (Brian Solis, Future Works)

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Social Media is probably easier to link to true ROI in the B2B space than it is for B2C. (Mitch Joel, Twist Image)

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It’s less about the tools and more about the attitude emerging from the social web. (Tara Hunt, HorsePigCow)...

Excellent insight on B2B social media marketing and social media strategies from thirteen among the top experts in the field! But, wait! Why the blog post said 13+3+1? Because, like when I am at conferences where I speak or moderate, I always want to hear from the audience, too – in this case, the users comments to the article published on Mashable. And the last lesson is my input that I want to share with you too as I did with the Mashable community!

The comments I like most come from a 20-years old graduate and a couple of unidentified users with arcane nicknames. Let’s hear from them the 3 additional lessons learned in B2B social media marketing.

A lot of people treat social media more as an art than a science, leading to inevitable pitfalls. It’s key to temper the organic development of such a campaign in conventional marketing practices, with hard data and analyses. (Matt Charleton, MattCharleton.com).

The “expertise” issue is key. Most businesses who are looking to form a relationship/agreement with another businesses wants to engage with competent firms. The introduction process in B2B is much longer than that of B2X transactions. It can be hard to tap into the general market, so find niche markets and go after these businesses full force. (timL)

Most B2B’s are looking for ROI. Showing them value and ROI in SM brings it to their attention. Showing them pointers to get there happens AFTER you show them “Value”. Most B2B’s are still in the traditional means of ROI which creates a harder platform to attain when working in their landscape trying to show them SM ROI. (mp4u)

mp4u also added as comment to the article an excellent recap of the 13 social media marketing lessons from the B2B experts, that I will surely use as bullet points in one of my next presentations on social media topics.

My personal contribution to the discussion on Mashable (also reported as comment to the post) is that B2B marketers should build their own social media team internally, maybe with the initial support of a social media marketing agency for social media set-up, kick-off and resource training. In-house is definitely better than outsourced.

Let me also explain why – from an agency standpoint, it takes always a big learning curve to absorb the culture, the style and the technical jargon of B2B businesses, specially those in the industrial sector. B2B companies are hard to manage when you have to represent them in open conversations on social networks, and it is needed – more than it happens on B2B campaigns – to tap into the client’s knowledge very often.

A good advice to B2B marketers is to allocate and train at least one internal resource (two is better), so to be able to manage directly the most strategic / delicate channels, and to be the point of contact and knowledge hub for the agencies supporting the social media marketing efforts. In-house is definitely best than outsourced – and this is more and more requested also by our B2B and B2C clients, for which we provide more and more training and support to make them able to engage successfully on social media networks with their own internal teams.

Before closing this post, let me say thank you to Tamar Weinberg at Mashable for putting this great article together and moderating its comment thread, to the B2B expert for their 13 precious advices, and to the Mashable community for providing us with additional 3 b2B social media marketing insights!

Even if I find challenging and honored when I get invited to speak or moderate panels at great conferences at big venues, (like SES London 2010 the week before), I still love the atmosphere, mood and networking of smaller conferences like RIMC 2010. When there are less than 300-400 people in the room I feel free to walk among the audience with a microphone (or two) in my hand, make eye contact with the attendees and shoot the occasional question to the audience, even during my presentation and not just for Q&A.

This is why I’m also a great fan of the Search Congress series in Spain, of MediaCamps around the world (I signed up to speak at MediaCamp Perugia next month) and several other “more intimate” events around the world. Right after SES London I also participated to a round table at SEO Campus Paris 2010, and I found both the event and the organization behind to be perfect, a human size show. I will also be speaking soon at SASCon in Manchester (an event focusing on Search, Analitycs and Social Media organized by SEMPO UK), at SEMStandard 2010 in Warsaw, Poland, and at the Nonick Conference in Bilbao, Spain.

Back to the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference 2010, the event has been a convergence of some among the smartest international search marketing experts and speakers with some of the most savvy online marketers in Iceland, all lead by the amazing Nordic eMarketing team of Kristjan Mar Hauksson.

Great speakers at RIMC 2010. I had the pleasure to see again and assist to a presentation of my good friend Allan Dick of Vintage Tubs, who also moderated the Social Media Marketing session where I was presenting. I also enjoyed catching up again after SES London with Anne Kennedy, Mikkel de Mib Svendsen, Dixon Jones, Shane Borelli and Ashley Friedlein, beside of meeting my SEMPO Europe Co-Chair Paul Doleman and his iCrossing UK team. I shared the Social Media Marketing panel with Jens Hilmersson of Nordic eMarketing and Matt Sewell of Hunterlodge and enjoyed other great presentations from Elísabet Grétarsdóttir of CCP Games (who did an amazing presentation about the virtual world of EVE Online), Kjartan Sverrisson of Icelandair, Sasha Berlik of Mexad and Jenny Leahy of Microsoft/Bing. Great questions and interaction from the public too! The only missing announced speaker was Mike Grehan, also recently elected as Board Director at SEMPO, who had a last minute health problem (nothing serious) and couldn’t make it to the event.

My presentation “Social Media What?” has been direct and thought-provoking as usual. The audience was expecting to hear me speaking about how to make business on social media, as reported on the official event program, but I started my speech saying “forget about it, buy some ads on Facebook if you want to do some sales!“, then brought the audience back to what social media is, how to “behave” on social media networks (search marketers dos and don’ts), and I finally touched base on Social Media Strategies: which channels? which goals? which resources? who’s your social media ecosystem?

I also presented a few quick case histories, starting with some of the solutions we implemented for Global Search Interactive clients in the social media space. I showed that no social media strategy is equal to another, and invited the audience to “find their own way to social media”, giving out several suggestions as I usually do (note: the clients’ slides have been removed from the Slideshare presentation, as we didn’t have full permission for publishing form a couple of them). I’m sure the audience was glad to discover that among the case histories I presented two brands who are doing particularly well on social media marketing: one is Skittles, while the other is the very own Icelandic Board of Tourism, who launched at the end of last year the campaign Iceland wants to be your friend and it’s now fully engaged on several channels (blog, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo) taking seriously the aspect of “contributing to the online conversations“.

I also introduced a cool Social Media Landscape Comparison Chart that I got via Facebook on the same morning of the conference, and that I promptly integrated in the presentation – but let me publish the image here too, so you can have a bird eye on the entire comparison chart (in the presentation content is split in three slides), where the major social media channels and networks are evaluated in terms of online marketing goals.

Interesting analysis, don’t you think so? The comparison chart has been originally created and published by cmo.com – good job, guys! I don’t particular agree on some of the point, but overall this is a great guide to understand the social media landscape , and to evaluate social media networks via online marketing goals and social media strategies. I think I will dedicate a post to this chart alone in the next future.

Back to the Reykjavik conference, a word needs to be spent also on the aftermath of RIMC 2010. The hosting efforts of Nordic eMarketing has been epic! Speakers dinners before and after the conference, nice hotel in central Reykjavik and special tour to geysers, waterfalls and geothermal spas! And, most of all, a lot of fun!

The climax of the aftermath has been reached during the visit to the art gallery and atelier of Haukur Mar Hauksson, Kristjan’s father and very talented, prolific and visionary Icelandic artist (center, in the picture above). Amazing place, lots of food and drinks, and plenty of music instruments that transformed the dinner into a jamming gig, where pretty much everybody played instruments or singed-along – and allegedly I destroyed a tambourine because I played it like a drum set with drum sticks – but I’m a punk rocker used to destroy guitars and drums, so the tambourine was not big deal for me! =)

Before closing this post, let me share also with you more pictures from the amazing week I spent in Iceland. I rented a car for maximum freedom and I went off exploring glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls, geysers, fjords and other stunning Icelandic natural beauties. I uploaded all my pictures on Flickr, click on the picture above to see my Iceland photo collection, or follow the links to see the specific photo sets of RIMC 2010, Reykjavik, amazing Icelandic landscapes, weird encounters like geothermic greenhouses at night or dream places like the famous Blue Lagoon.

It’s a little bit of a shame that I took so long to publish this interview to Robin Good. Originally recorded on a sunny december morning in Rome, these files ended up in a back-up hard drive I lost track of, and that I finally found more recently (with a lot of other “lost files“). Nice that I finally got them back.

Robin Good is one of my favorite references when it comes to internet marketing. Despite of the Sherwood-esque nickname Robin Good decided to be public with, Robin (real name Luigi Canali De Rossi) is an italian chap living in Rome where he set up the headquarters of his organization, that keeps growing behind the efforts of the knowledge sharing website Master New Media and other independent publishing ventures such as RobinGood.tv.

As a matter of fact, independent publishing is what made Robin…. independent, as he has been the very first pioneer in Italy (and among the firsts in the world) in setting up a business model based on Freeconomics (the free Economics recently discussed in a book also by Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame) – giving knowledge away for free, empowering web users towards the adoption of internet tools that can actually make them free to set up any publishing initiative on the web.

Robin Good’s business model is based on advertising, and Robin has been the first independent publisher in Italy to be able to get a steady stream of profits generating uniquely from advertising on his web properties.

So I put my SEMPO hat on and, on a sunny december morning in Rome, I finally met and interviewed Robin Good! please note that, even if the recordings are 2 years old, the topics discussed from both Robin and myself (below) are still hot and valid today – maybe because we both are internet visionaries? =)

Independent publishing has been of course the topic of the first part of the interview, a good way for Robin Good to introduce himself and the topic. Watch the video!

In the second part of the video Robin Good touches base on search engines, and compares search engines to “The Great Librarian“, a very interesting metaphor that really amused me – but very true! Watch the second part of the video interview.

Third and final part of the interview to Robin Good went back to independent publishing and, more in detail, on the vast availability of internet tools that can allow any user to set up any publishing venture on the web for free.

Watch out, free from buying big platform, but still costly in terms development and maintenance. Setting up an online publishing venture is not a game and requires vision, skills and plenty of time material. And yes, some money too – because Freeconomy is good, but then you will find out that to make a great job you still need the premium version of most of the free tools… anyway, Robin’s vision at this regard is pretty clear, and I personally support it. Watch the third and final part of the video interview on internet tools.

Just to make this post complete, I need to post also the videos that Robin Good shot while interviewing me! That’s right, as a Master publisher and video evangelist, he didn’t waste the opportunity to interview me for RobinGood.tv about SEMPO, search and social media marketing.

My videos distributed by Robin Good have been around online for a long time. I can recap them all here in this post for your convenience, and to recreate that cool mood of a sunny december morning in Rome with Robin talking about giving out and sharing on the web.
The first set of videos is an interview in 5 parts titled “SEO and Social Media: Q&A with Massimo Burgio”

Part 1 ……………….. Part 2 ……………….. Part 3 ……………….. Part 4 ……………….. Part 5

Robin Good also edited other two fragments of the interview, one still on SEO topics “SEO: The importance of good content“, the other one “What is SEMPO?” to introduce the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization I proudly represent. Enjoy the videos. Thanks Robin!